Independent wins president post in Kashi Vidyapeeth

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Varanasi: An independent candidate on November 3 won the president post in the student union elections in Varanasi’s Mahatma Gandhi’s Kashi Vidyapeeth.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP, All India Student Council), affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party, lost all seats, its rivals, a combination of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) and Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (SCS), managed to win the post of the vice president.

The president post has gone to Rahul Dubey, who contested as an independent candidate. Rahul was associated with SCS, the student wing of Samajwadi Party. But this year, he resigned and contested as an independent candidate. He defeated Valmiki Upadhyay of ABVP and Varun Yadav of the NSUI-SCS alliance. The winning margin was more than a thousand votes.

The union at this key university had no dominance of any particular political group. It has been fought between NSUI and ABVP for many years. But since BJP came to the center in 2014, ABVP grew its base and Ayushi Shrimali became the president of union.

Out of the total 8,133 voters of the university, 4,725 (about 58%) voted.

The election was marked by violence between students groups after ABVP supporters allegedly assaulted supporters of a few independent candidates. Police had to intervene and apprehended several students in the same matter.